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2004-2005 Fellows

2004-2005 Fellow Nava-Vaughn

Teresa Nava-Vaughn

Stanford University
Department of History

Teresa Nava-Vaughn is a PhD candidate in the department of History at Stanford University. Her current work examines the complex mechanisms for building identity and legitimacy and the evolution of kingship ideology in the early medieval Astur kingdom. Nava-Vaughn's dissertation, on which she is working this year at the Humanities Center, explores Asturian textual, architectural, and archaeological sources and compares these with similar materials from other kingdoms developing alongside the Carolingian empire. Nava-Vaughn holds a M.A in History from Stanford University and a B.A. in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Project Summary

Nava-Vaughn's dissertation tells the story of the Asturian kingship, from the beginning of the kingdom until its fusion with the Kingdom of León. As a historical enterprise, her project is partly empirical and recuperative, contributing to knowledge of a specific era and clarifying a previously obscured intersection of secular and sacred authority in early medieval Spain. It is an analysis of how the earliest Asturian kings built a kingdom and how the last restructured their history that became a foundation for later ideas of Spanish royal power - ideas that culminated with the expansion of Spain into the New World. Nava-Vaughn's goal in exploring a wide variety of source genres is to gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of kingship ideology and how it was perceived and presented. By exploring models created for other developing kingdoms outside Spain, the major contribution of her dissertation will be in drawing larger conclusions about early medieval kingship and representations of power relevant beyond the small community of historians of medieval Spain.

Last year Nava-Vaughn completed a stay as a Visiting Scholar at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Madrid, where she analyzed the specific changes in the written sources and archaeological sites pertinent to her investigation. I am now in the writing phase of her dissertation, which she plans to complete by June 2005.